by T. S. Joyce
Because of him, I’d never have to hide again.
“You saved me in more ways than you know.”
Epilogue
A plastic bag, half-full of pecans, crinkled as the wind whipped around me. I scoured the earth for another and marveled at everything my woods had taken and given me in return. My fingertips flicked away dry leaves of autumn and fell on a solid weight to fill my palm. I jerked my gaze at a rustle of movement and searched for my old, mangy dog. Half of the town had helped me scour my woods for him years ago, but there was no evidence he had ever existed. I still imagined him running wild out in the forest somewhere, happy. I’d probably always look for him.
Sheriff Clancy still didn’t like me much and definitely didn’t like the way Angus had died with his throat ripped out and no feasible explanation. He was just being stubborn, though, as everyone else in town had accepted me over time. I had friends now, but most importantly, I had a family in the McCreedys. I was one of them now. I stood and rubbed my hand over the swell of my belly and smiled at the answering movement from my little one. Soon, there would be a new McCreedy to add to the family tree.
Soft footsteps told me of Caleb’s approach. In a gesture so simple but so profound, he touched the small of my back and took the burden of the bag from my hands. A smile and an easy word brought a shift to my heart that only came when he was near. He touched my growing stomach with such reverence, I thanked my lucky stars for the hundredth time that he’d decided he wanted a family with me.
I was happy here with him because I had known sorrow. Our scars, long healed, told of an iron strength that replaced our fear.
We stood, looking over our woods, connected by intertwined fingers, my bear man and me.
The ghosts had rattled free, and the shadows no longer held menace.
My ghosts had rattled free.
I was free.
Other Books by T. S. Joyce
Bear Valley Shifters – Bestselling, KDP All-Star Series
The Witness and the Bear (Book 1)
Devoted to the Bear (Book 2)
Return to the Bear (Book 3)
Betray the Bear (Book 4)
Redeem the Bear (Book 5)
Hells Canyon Shifters - Bestselling, KDP All-Star Series
Call of the Bear (Book 1)
Fealty of the Bear (Book 2)
Avenge the Bear (Book 3)
Claim the Bear (Book 4)
Heart of the Bear (Coming January 2015)
Wolf Brides - Bestselling, KDP All-Star Series
Wolf Bride (Book 1)
Red Snow Bride (Book 2)
Dawson Bride (Book 3)
Shifter Romance Newsletter Sign-Up
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Sneak Peek
WOLF BRIDE
(Wolf Brides, Book 1)
Read on for a sneak peek of the thrilling first book in the Wolf Brides series.
Chapter One
Kristina
The last day of the carriage ride to Colorado was just as exciting as the first day of our journey from Chicago. I grinned saucily at Ms. Birmingham who clutched tightly to her frilly, purple hat. The good Lord blessed that woman with the sourest disposition known to mankind, but in the days since our journey began, she hadn’t once managed to dampen my mood.
Her cherished plum colored hat, which boasted gads of silk ribbon and an array of dark plumage numerous enough to shield the perpetual frown underneath, gave me distraction from the endless wrenching of the carriage wheels on rugged road. There was no way the bird whose feathers decorated that hat had survived. Poor thing.
Ms. Birmingham was growing fidgety under my smile. My happy demeanor did that to people—made them uncomfortable—but I couldn’t help myself. At nineteen, the possibilities of my future stretched on and on, like the stars of a midnight sky.
Her disapproving gaze slipped to the immodest cut of my dress for the hundred and sixteenth time. I’d been counting. I wasn’t well versed on the area, because I hadn’t ever traveled outside of Chicago, far as I could remember, but I was pretty sure there were whores in Colorado Springs just the same as everywhere else. Why, far as I could tell, whores were the nation’s first ladies to settle here to keep the men happy.
Tipping my chin up primly, I slid the foot and a half to the window.
Besides, I was mending my ways. I was going to be a proper lady with a husband and a house and everything.
With a sigh, I rested my elbows against the wooden window frame as another jolt in the road nearly made my tailbone jump through my throat. For the price of an entire week’s wages, Jack Bronson found me an advertisement to get me out of Chicago. I could count, but reading was beyond me, and going out on a limb to hire that drunkard seemed like a sound enough investment at the time. He’d found me an advertisement in the paper about a man seeking a wife. It was a simple ad and I’d memorized it easily because I’d recited it in the months that finally led to my travels.
Man seeks wife. Good birthing hips, tidy, quiet. Will cook for three brothers.
Well, one out of four wasn’t bad. My hips were sound. I’d never been accused of being a petite little old thing. I wasn’t big, but my curves didn’t belong on a waif either. My reply had been equally short, but he seemed to like it fine enough, because one month later he wrote to me directly and told me to make arrangements for my travels with the money he’d sent along. Escaping had been tricky, but I was a wily creature and one not easily caged.
I bet Jeremiah Dawson was waiting right at this very moment for me in town. He wouldn’t be a handsome man, or why would he be putting out an advertisement for a wife? Probably had a pockmarked face and rotted teeth, but who was I to cast stones? I was an ex saloon girl after all. Even if we didn’t get along, he was just one man to please. I’d worked lots of them, and if ever there was such thing as a professional man-handler, well I held a certificate in that.
Perking up, I shoved my chest half way out the window. “I can see it,” I squealed to Ms. Birmingham, who’d apparently been dozing off because she jumped straight in the air and smooshed the top of her hat onto the roof of the buggy.
Her mutterings were uncharitable, but I didn’t give two figs what she had to say because we were finally there and I was finally going to meet him. Jeremiah.
His momma did right to give an ugly man a named that rolled off of the tongue like that.
Over the matching chestnut backs of the four horses that seemed to pull us even faster with the prospect of town and a bucket of oats, a small wooden bridge was all that stood between our carriage and the first buildings of Main Street. I assumed it was Main Street, because every tiny railroad town we’d driven through on our travels had one. I slurped myself back into the carriage and tried in vain to fix my hair. A pointless effort because curly hair like mine wasn’t meant to be tamed. I gave up on the pins and finished braiding the length of it as we pulled to the front of a supply store. Animal hides hung from nails outside and the air smelled like a collision between man and forest.
“After you,” I said gallantly to Ms. Birmingham, who was all but falling over herself to escape the cabin of our transportation.
She groaned as she sank into the near foot of mud that coated the road under the carriage step. Mud didn’t bother me. In fact, I’d rolled in much filthier with a man for a coin. I hopped right down into the muck with a giggle. Ms. Birmingham squawked unattractively as little mud sprinkles flew out to grasp onto the hem of her slowly soaking dress. She tried to flee but her fine heeled shoe got caught in the glop, so I reached out to steady her. Even if she was obviously repulsed by my touch, she didn’t have much choice. It was me, or fall face first into a smelly pile of a horse’s meadow muffins.
“You have to slide your feet, ma’am,” I said helpfully. “Hey mister?” I yelled to the carriage driver who was apparently too busy watching the show to lend a hand. “You mind?”
> I swear he chuckled but still he scaled the carriage and half dragged Ms. Birmingham onto the wooden deck in front of a row of stores. And then he retrieved her mud filled shoe. Our hero.
Ms. Birmingham’s family was waiting in front of the supply store and loaded her bags into a flat bottom buggy before they even touched the ground. The clunk of my one small luggage was drowned out by the noise of the busy town. Why the driver put my bag down in front of the saloon next door, I hadn’t a guess but my inner compass pulled me to it like a bug to a candle jar.
No one was waiting for me.
Looking like a scantily dressed slug, with my mud trail following me, I pushed open the swinging doors to a raucous song the girls of the house were singing from atop the bar. I smiled privately. Say what you will about whores, but we sure knew how to have a good time.
The conversations were muffled around me but one perked me up right quick. “Them Dawson boys ain’t right and you know it. Something’s got to be done about that disappearin’ livestock,” a wiry older man with a handful of cards growled. Five other gentlemen around the table nodded in agreement under worn cowboy hats.
Huh? Was I marrying into a family of thieves? I shrugged. Still an ex whore. Still not casting stones.
“You here for a job, miss?” the dour-faced man behind the bar asked.
“Not at the moment. I’ll try my hand at marriage and then we’ll see,” I said with a wink.
“What can I do you for?”
“Would you happen to know where I can find Jeremiah Dawson?”
The girl’s song had ended and as they slid off the countertop, the conversations around me dipped into an uncomfortable silence.
“What do you want with Mr. Dawson?” the bartender asked.
“Why, to marry him.”
His look went cold and the blue in his eyes turned a little frostier. He jerked his head once toward the window. A man sat reading a paper in a buggy across the muddy channel.
“Thank you, sir,” I managed, unable to quite take my eyes away from the dark haired mountain that leaned comfortably into the wooden seat like it was a four poster feather bed.
I shuffled out of the saloon, trailing my slime behind me, and hoisted the bag to my hip. Fifteen sloshy strides later and I was standing by the buggy. The man graced me with a glance, then went back to reading, so I took the opportunity to ogle his beautiful face. He had short, dark brown hair that peeked out from beneath his cowboy hat, and a leather duster that protected him from the elements. His jaw was shaven clean and the planes of his face were sharp like glass.
He huffed an irritated sound. “Can I help you?” He slid a coffee colored glare in my direction and held me frozen fast.
“Jeremiah Dawson?”
He frowned. Well that was yes enough for me. I hobbled to the back of the wagon and hefted my bag into the back.
“Don’t tell me you’re the wife I advertised for.”
“The one and only.”
He hopped down from the buggy in one startlingly smooth movement and stood to his full height. This man didn’t belong in a dusty cattle town. He belonged with his feet in the ground growing roots to hold him in place, and his snow dusted mountain shoulders holding the weather at bay. Somewhere in his lineage, a giant had crashed into his family tree.
“Mother of pearl,” I breathed as I stretched my neck back to see his face. No doubt about it, I’d made the right choice in coming to Colorado Springs. This man could offer protection from all that was coming for me. He might even live through it. A tiny weight lifted.
He squinted down at me and cocked his head. “Can you really cook?”
“No.”
“Clean?”
“I can learn I suppose.”
“You a quiet woman?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then why’d you answer the dadburned advertisement?” His deep voice was scary when he was mad.
“Would you have brought me here if I didn’t say I was all those things?”
He dragged opaque eyes across every inch of my dress and took his time about it. I fidgeted until he sighed. “Are you a whore, ma’am?”
I gave my most charming smile. “Not anymore. Quit last Thursday.”
He groaned and looked at the sky like that lone storm cloud would wash me into better wife material. “You ain’t the woman for me Miss…”
“Yeaton. Kristina Yeaton, but you can call me Kris,” I said, holding out my hand. I was undeterred. Any man worth his boots needed a little convincing with just about anything. It was a man’s way.
He stared at me until I dropped my empty hand back to my side. “Look, I can’t go back where I came from and you’ve already put up the money to get me here. Might as well try me out for a day,” I said, waggling my eyebrows.
He didn’t look amused. His frown did give way to a smirk, however, as he looked at something over my shoulder. “Like I said, you ain’t for me, but my brother wouldn’t have any qualms about marrying a saloon girl.”
My shoulders sagged. “Your brother?” Here was where the other boot dropped. I thought I was getting this fine specimen of a man for my very own husband for a moment, and now what I was really getting was Quasimodo. Jeremiah Dawson, that brute of a man, had ruined everything. I’d been perfectly happy to marry an ogre until I saw him and got my hopes up clear to the sky. Damn him.
“Who’s your brother?” I sounded ungrateful even to myself.
He pointed behind me, and I wanted to kick his smirk straight into his throat.
A man stood with his back to us, talking to a storekeeper. He wore a dark gray vest over a sky blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms that rested comfortably on his waist. He wasn’t quite as big as Jeremiah but he was still a head taller than the man he was talking to, and much taller still than me. His hair was longer and dark under his hat and had an appealing wave to it. The vest over cowhide pants cut a mean line with a trim waist and wide shoulders. Okay, so his face was likely atrocious. It had to be.
“Luke,” Jeremiah said quietly from behind me.
Instantly, the man jerked his head to the side and I got my first view of his profile. Now if I’d had to service men this beautiful in Chicago, I’d have loved my job a lot more than I did. Dark stubble brushed his jaw and it matched animated eyebrows that probably betrayed every emotion he ever had. I couldn’t tell the color of his eyes from where I stood, but they were stunning. That much, any woman with working lady parts could see. If I looked hard enough, which I was, the outline of his shoulder muscles could be seen beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. Tall, dark boots held his pants close to fit legs, and his spurs jangled attractively as he turned.
Green. His eyes were bright green.
“I’ll pick them up when we come back through town,” he told the storekeeper before hoisting a sack of flour off the porch like it was a yard of rolled fabric. He sauntered easily toward us.
My mouth was hanging open wide enough to catch flies, so I closed it. He had to be mine. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my entire nineteen years. My favorite food was bacon, and I’d gladly give up pig for the rest of my life if I could have him.
“Best if I tell him,” Jeremiah whispered in my ear.
“Tell me what?” Luke said from much too far away to be able to hear us over the street noise.
Strange.
“It’s a surprise,” Jeremiah said shortly. “Load up.”
The towering men headed for the front seat of the buggy and I glanced around frantically. No help for it then. I scrambled into the back with my skirts flying nearly to my hips. I was pretty good at first impressions.
“What the hell?” Luke said, glaring at his brother. “You gonna help her or what?”
“Ain’t my job,” Jeremiah said with a grin. “Hup!” He slapped the backs of the two black horses in front with a snap of the reins.
Luke looked back at me once more with a slight frown, then sho
ok his head like his brother had lost his mind.
My husband didn’t know he was caught yet.
WOLF BRIDE
Entire Series, Available Now
Amazon
About the Author
T. S. Joyce
T.S. Joyce is devoted to bringing hot shifter romances to readers. Hungry alpha males are her calling card, and the wilder the men, the more she'll make them pour their hearts out. Experienced at handling an alpha male of her own, she lives in a tiny town, outside of a tiny city, and devotes her life to writing big stories. Foodie, bear whisperer, ninja, thief of tiny bottles of awesome smelling hotel shampoo, nap connoisseur, movie fanatic, and zombie slayer, and most of this bio is true.
Bear Shifters? Check
Smoldering Alpha Hotness? Double Check
Sexy Scenes? Fasten up your girdles, ladies and gents, it's gonna to be a wild ride.
For more information about T. S. Joyce and her work, visit her website here.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Other Books by T. S. Joyce
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Sneak Peek
About the Author